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MEMBER DIARY

I read Politico. You don’t have to. PS: Romney’s winning

This is my first diary. It will be mostly “I read Politico so you don’t have to”. When I do these, I try to have a theme. For this one, the theme will be ‘We’re winning’.

I’ll start with a statement: Romney’s winning. In evidence, I am going to take a quick look at money, polling and historical trends. The first about money is obvious, in a stark contrast from John McCain’s concession on the campaign finance front, the RNC and Romney campaign just announced the largest fund raising month in the 2012 Presidential election cycle: 106 million w/160 million cash on hand. This surpassed the DNC and Obama campaign by 35 million in raw dollars. Just two months ago, the Dems held a 95 million dollar advantage in cash on hand as Romney faced a brutal primary and Obama essentially horded his campaign cash. That advantage has disappeared as the Obama campaign has had a tepid few months in comparison with Romney, combined with a large burn rate over the last month of the previous cash horde.

Polling and historical trends really have to be taken together. If anything, this paints an even more depressing picture if your name happens to be David Axelrod. The incumbent rule comes from a famous article by Nick Panagakis at the PollingReport where he determined that any incumbent under 50% was in deep doo doo because undecideds broke against the incumbent at a rate north of 80%. Essentially, in an election with a well-known incumbent, undecided means “fire the incumbent unless the challenger has a John Edwards or Mark Foley moment”. Both Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics and Dick Morris come to the same conclusion; adding in more recent results: undecided voters in huge numbers break away from the incumbent. Now looking at the polls on Real Clear Politics, if you move undecideds breaking to Romney at a 70% rate (a full 10-15 points lower than the historical trends), Romney would carry Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Colorado, Missouri, and Michigan. This is a win for Romney to the tune of 297 electoral votes. If you change the assumption to Obama picking off 35%, of the states above Romney would lose Colorado and still win the election. This does not even account for the advantage Republican candidates get when polling likely vs registered voters or the house effects of firms like PPP and NBC. Romney’s current strategy is winning; both the polls and money bear this out.

Now on to: I read Politico so you don’t have to…

Democrats are stalkers. It seems stricia’s stalking of acat is normal for the loons of the Democratic Party. It is nice to know however the DKos trolls are getting a little sunshine by escaping the confines of their parent’s basement. I would suggest that job hunting would be a more useful activity than stalking and voyeuring but that is just me. This is what the troops do when the other side is winning.

Romney ad men, Schriefer and Stevens are running a familiar playbook. The thing is the Stevens-Schriefer playbook has worked well for them in races that involved a weak incumbent (i.e. Christy vs Corzine) and not so well with an incumbent or de-facto incumbent (Crist vs Rubio). I live in northeast Tennessee, putting me in the Virginia and North Carolina media markets so I see a lot of Obama ads; funny thing is David Axelrod is running the same campaign for Obama that Stevens ran for Crist. A lot of attack ads on the unknown guy; little substance for the well-known candidate. The author ignores this point. Only the lesser known challenger can run on attacking the other guy. The incumbent only wins by running on his record: forever and always. This is why Romney is winning; the Obama can’t run on his record.

Oh wait, maybe Politico is being forced into the point above. Uh oh, even the Democrats at Politico are coming around to the fact that Obama’s poll numbers have sat at 47% for 5 months and not moved as Romney continues to move north. See the point above, undecided voters break towards the challenger. Uh, Romney is winning and Politico is crying.

Kay Bailey Hutchinson says Jim DeMint should sell out his principals and be just like her, if he wants to be “affective” in his upcoming role as Chairman of Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Good Ole Kay B, you just got to love her. She calls a 15 trillion dollar debt; rising at a rate of 1.25 trillion per year as “affective”. Kay B is a joke; I just can’t think of a better one. Ok, it is off theme but it is funny.

Debbie Wah Wah, to quote Chris Christie, Are you stupid? Seriously, doubling down on David Axelrod’s accusation that Romney was the most secretive candidate since Nixon? Let me see, one of the two people running for President admitted to taking literary license with his own autobiography (composites don’t ya know). One of the two people for President refused to release documents to Congress and has a current employee under indictment for lying to Congress. Uh, that would be King Barack, the Dog Eater, not Mitt Romney. Romney’s winning and Obama surrogates want to talk about his bank accounts (much better than to defend Obama’s record).

Aaron Sorkin’s sad, bloviating; tea party hating overdrawn ratings sinkhole: Newsroom has one fan, Dan Rather. I am shocked, a show dedicated to unprincipled media clowns has as its only fan: Dan Rather, the Godfather of lying, no principled, media clowns. In all honesty, I watched Newsroom last night. From the opening monologue, to the spewing of Obama campaign rhetoric regarding the Tea Party, it was the worst type of television, it was boring. My dog woke me up to let her outside (either to use the bathroom or she couldn’t stand the boredom). This is actually a good note to end on as the rest of Politico would be recapping boredom.